‘Not quite.’
‘You are a good diplomat, Vladimir Zhukov.’
‘Thank you, sir.’
Not quite as it is painted! Such ludicrous understatement. Why couldn’t the two of them share the truth? The oppressed masses smoking cigars and running two cars. That’s what hits you. We both know it, so why not be honest with me? But he was being naïve to expect such candour between a second secretary and an ambassador. He put the two chairs in front of the grand piano because it was an unlikely nest for a microphone. Not necessarily an American microphone: there were plenty of Soviet bugs around the place. It was part of the system. Why not? if you had nothing to hide. On the other hand you could hardly expect junior members of the staff to be expansive within such a system. ‘What,’ Zuvorin asked, ‘has impressed you most about America?’ The puppets usually denounced the exploitation—before he stopped them.
‘Their houses, I think,’ Zhukov said.
‘The houses? In what way?’
‘The way they live in units. Isolated, if you like from each other.’ Zhukov felt his way with caution. ‘I just don’t see how they can ever understand us. The communal soul of Russia, I mean. Their characters are so different, so self-sufficient …’
Together they saw the hibernating family and friends around a stove in a wooden village hut; the city apartments with their communal kitchens and bathrooms; the old and the new settings of shared gaiety, love and strife.
‘An unusual first impression, Comrade Zhukov. But I don’t think for one second that they want to understand us. It is we who should try and understand them—it is we, after all, who are trying to spread Marxist-Leninism throughout the world.’
‘You are right, of course,’ Zhukov said. ‘But it seems a shame …’
‘I believe,’ said Zuvorin, skirting the tortuous alleys that might lie ahead, ‘that you speak excellent English. That is how you came to be given this post. Where did you learn the language? I must confess I am a little jealous.’ He waited.
‘Your English is perfect,’ Zhukov said.
Zuvorin nodded happily. He did enjoy flattery. But at his age was it not forgivable?
‘I studied languages at the university,’ Zhukov said. ‘Then I became an interpreter in the Army. I improved my English when we met the British and Americans in Berlin.’
‘Ah so. Our allies. They should have followed Patton’s advice. Where would we be then, comrade?’
Zhukov said he didn’t know where they would be.
‘So that is all that has impressed you about Washington—the houses?’
‘I have, of course, been struck by the standard of living.’
‘Of course you have,’ Zuvorin murmured. He offered Zhukov a cigarette. Sometimes he was surprised that more of his staff didn’t defect, because he knew perfectly well that many of them contemplated it when they first tasted the milk and honey. But they were deterred by family hostages ‘held’ in Russia, by language difficulties, by the knowledge that after the headline glamour of defection they would be misfits. Also loyalty was encouraged by promises of promotion to other Western fleshpots; and when they visited the Soviet Union they were big men, regarded with as much awe as football players or movie stars. But, the ambassador sensed, Zhukov’s temptations would be different: he would taste and savour freedom of expression. And he spoke excellent English. A man to watch; but, of course, he was already being watched as, perhaps, was Valentin Zuvorin himself.
‘I have formed the impression,’ Zhukov continued, ‘that they are a nation bent on suicide. Too much food, too much smoking, too much alcohol, no exercise. And,’ he added, ‘I have been very impressed by the fact that they never walk anywhere. Then they wonder why so many die from heart attacks.’
Zuvorin massaged his chest with two fingers and stubbed out his cigarette. Officially he was supposed to suffer from asthma. He managed a deep melodious laugh. ‘You are an original man, Comrade Zhukov. A dangerous thing to be a few years ago. But now many things have changed. Your originality—and your excellent English—has been recognized. You are to be promoted. Although you will have to wait some time before you officially become a first secretary.’
Zhukov expressed surprise. ‘I am honoured. But I have only been here three weeks …’
‘You have been fortunate,’ the ambassador said. He stood up and paced the gracious room. ‘A first secretary called Tardovsky has been recalled to Moscow at very short notice. A question of health …’ He glanced at Zhukov to see whether he had heard rumours; Zhukov remained impassive. ‘Tardovsky spoke excellent English also. You seem to be the man to take his place.’
The ambassador wondered whether to confide in Zhukov. Such a confidence might be interpreted as weakness in himself; perhaps even Zhukov himself was a senior member of the K.G.B.—second secretary at forty-four did not seem to be much of an achievement for such an intelligent man. You could never tell; nor could you equate seniority in the K.G.B. with diplomatic seniority. Although Valentin Zuvorin was fairly sure of his authority.
To hell with such furtive considerations: he, Valentin Zuvorin, occupied the most important post in the Soviet overseas diplomatic service. He sat down again near the piano. ‘Tardovsky,’ he said, ‘was on the point of persuading a neurotic American from the State Department to hand over secret documents about American intent in Vietnam and the Middle East. The Americans thought Tardovsky might defect—he had no such intention, of course. Anyway the C.I.A. and F.B.I. got wind of it. There was a squalid scene in a bar on 14th Street’—no need to elaborate—‘with the result that Tardovsky has lost all credibility and therefore all usefulness to us in Washington either as an agent or a diplomat. So he has been recalled through no fault of his own.’ Although, Zuvorin thought, his future has not been enhanced.
‘I see.’ Zhukov pondered the fortuitous factors of success.
‘Is that all you have to say, comrade?’
‘I am deeply honoured, of course. But …’
‘But what?’
‘Does this mean that I will have to carry out similar subversive duties?’
Zuvorin almost patted him on the head. ‘Don’t worry yourself about such matters. It is sufficient that you have been chosen to fill an important diplomatic post. That is all that matters for the moment.’
For who am I, the ambassador asked himself, to say whether or not you are to become a spy?
Zhukov found that his new office duties were really an extension of his old ones. Only now the emphasis was more political. He still translated American newspapers, magazines, government reports, but his reading was more selective and he was expected to be more interpretive—hooking nuances of meaning lost in flat translation. He was also asked to translate government directives that somehow reached the Embassy before publication, and some that were never published at all. These were given to him by Mikhail Brodsky, and Zhukov only typed two copies of his translation, one for the ambassador, one for Brodsky. More deference from the rest of the staff, an office of his own, the satisfaction of responsibility: these were the perquisites of the new job, and they were balanced by the demands for industry and punctuality of Ambassador Zuvorin who answered similar demands from Moscow.
Most of the day Zhukov sat at his desk in his high-ceilinged Pullman office where perhaps once a nanny had put the children of rich parents to bed. He drank gallons of tea made with lemon and Narzan mineral water imported from Russia. At night he took his work home and slept with dreams dominated by United States policies, and sometimes in his waking moments wondered what other duties might lie ahead.
One Saturday shortly after his promotion Vladimir Zhukov, on the advice of several well-wishers from within the Embassy, took Valentina for a drive into the ghetto. Time, they said, to see the other side of the coin.
First